II. Trumpets,
Pifferi and Other Instruments in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies

6. Venetian
Processions and Ceremonies

6.1
The splendor of Venetian processions was legendary. Visitors from all
over Europe acknowledged that those of Venice exceeded by far the civic
and religious ceremonies of anywhere else, both in frequency and in
lavishness. Many writers expressed amazement at these Venetian displays
of power, wealth and pomp allied with piety.126
The close association between the temporal power of the city, represented
by the doge, and of civic religion, as represented by the doge's chapel
of St. Mark's, merged the functions of civic and religious ritual to
a high degree. Margaret King, in summarizing the views of the fifteenth-century
Venetian humanist Giovanni Caldiera about this merger of the secular
and the sacred, of state and church, as the guarantors of a stable polity,
declares "Republican virtues are identified with divine virtues, and
God and the State, patriotism and religion, are metaphorically fused."127
However, it was not just processions that achieved this metaphorical
fusion, for virtually every procession concluded with a ceremony of
some kind. Most often it was a liturgical ceremony in a church or cemetery
that served as the geographic goal of a procession, but it could also
be in the location where a peace treaty was publicly proclaimed and
posted, or even consist of secular ceremonies in the palace of the doge
or some patrician or nobleman where a procession culminated with a banquet,
dancing and general festivities. Processions and ceremonies, like church
and state, were indissolubly linked in Venice.

6.2
The most important element in a ducal procession was the official cortege,
governed by strict protocols regarding the order of groups of individuals
as well as the costumes they wore. However, the ducal cortege constituted
only one segment of a procession. The scuole grandi, the scuole
piccole, religious orders, artisans' guilds, the military, and any
number of other groups participated, depending on the festivity or occasion
being celebrated. Such processions were already quite elaborate in the
thirteenth century and already involved trumpets.128
Nevertheless, in this period, "both nobles and citizens walked in an
undifferentiated crowd behind the doge."129
After the government was reorganized in 1297, permanently fixing the
patrician status of certain families whose members were eligible for
election to the Concilio Maggiore, social hierarchy grew in importance
and ducal processions gradually became more elaborately organized. By
the fourteenth century, acts of the Council had defined with precision
the order of official elements in ducal processions. The processions
thus came to represent the constitutional hierarchy of governmental
authority as well as display the "ceremonial decorum and solemnity of
the state."130
By the middle of the sixteenth century, an elaborate bureaucracy had
developed to oversee the constitution of processions and the responsibilities
of the various groups that participated. In 1590, the first ceremoniale
was compiled, containing descriptions of actual ceremonies. Such records
were kept until 1729, eventually filling six volumes entitled Collegio
Ceremoniale.131
These records served as historical references to guide the organization
of subsequent processions and ceremonies. Ecclesiastics in St. Mark's
performed similar functions with regard to liturgical ceremonies, also
drawing up books of ceremonies from time to time.132

7. Descriptions
of Venetian Ducal Processions (Andate)

7.1
Various Venetian historians published descriptions, often highly detailed,
of the regular ducal andate (processional visits to churches
and institutions around the city) and of processions celebrating unique
events, such as royal visits or military victories.133
The ducal andate were a conspicuous feature of Venetian civic
life and were performed according to a strict calendar and protocol.
Francesco Sansovino described these andate in 1581 in a separate
chapter of his famous and twice-republished book on Venice.134
Marin Sanudo, whose diaries span the years 1497–1533, recounted
numerous processions for special occasions and their associated civic
events and rituals, sometimes relating the specific order of elements,
naming individual personages or categories of people, and describing
minute details of vestments (see sections
33–34). The most elaborate type of procession, including the
doge, his full complement of symbols, the Signoria and many other
personages as well, was called an andate in trionfo, or con
onori.135 During the course of a single year, there were, according to Sansovino,
fourteen separate andate in trionfo prescribed for the doge and
the Signoria in St. Mark’s and in St. Mark’s square,
as well as other andate to different churches in various sestieri
of the city on certain feast days. In addition there were andate
prescribed for anniversaries of military victories, the defeat of domestic
plots, and other secular events in the history of Venice, as well as
the translation of the relics of saints.136

7.2
Apart from these processions, Giovanni Stringa, in his enlarged re-edition
of Sansovino's book of 1604, lists another twenty-two andate
of the doge and Signoria that were not in trionfo, in
other words, without all the symbols of the doge's secular authority.137
These processions, which followed as elaborate protocols as the andatein trionfo, were centered around major feast days and religious
observances, such as Christmas and Holy Week. The majority of these
services took place in St. Mark's, and the processions both inside the
basilica and outside in the piazza (and piazzetta) included large numbers
of clerics as well as the six scuole grandi on seven specified
occasions.138
Edward Muir has counted at least 86 different days that had ceremonial
significance for Venice by the end of the sixteenth century.139
Just how magnificent these andate could be is illustrated in
an engraving published in 1610 by Giacomo Franco of a Corpus Christi
procession (Figure 4).140

7.3
A few other andate that did not involve visits to churches are
briefly described by Stringa,141
and Giustiniano Martinioni, in his 1663 re-edition of Sansovino's book,
lists four other andatein trionfo to various churches
established in the seventeenth century. But besides these scheduled,
officially delineated processions, numerous andate were performed
for special occasions, such as royal visits, receptions for new ambassadors,
investitures of high military officials and procurators, victory celebrations,
funerals of important civic officials, and any other event calling for
official ceremonies, such as the festivities celebrating the end of
the plague in 1631.142

7.4
In addition to the ducal Andate, processions were organized by
lay confraternities, comprising the six Scuole grandi and the
numerous Scuole piccole. Each scuola was associated with
a particular church, and these processions often had as their goal the
patron church where the celebration culminated with a religious ceremony.
Celebrations could also be privately sponsored, as in the case of wedding
processions, which might conclude with a banquet in the home of the
bride or groom's parents.

8. Trombe
d'argento in Venetian Ducal Processions

8.1
The iconographic record and documentary evidence regarding Venetian
processions in trionfo, or con onori, concentrate on two
different groups of instruments in the official cortege, the doge's
trombe d'argento and his pifferi. Venice was the proud
possessor of six special silver trumpets, dubbed trombe lunghe
or trombe d'argento,that according to legend had been
a gift of Pope Alexander III in 1177.The legend surrounding
the origin of these long silver trumpets was repeated by Venetian historians
for centuries as an important aspect of the "myth of Venice." These
trumpets were reputed to have been received by Doge Sebastiano Ziani,
along with eight banners, from Pope Alexander on the occasion of Doge
Ziani's ceremonial entrance into Rome and in honor of the service of
Ziani and the Venetians in saving the papacy from German invaders by
negotiating a peace between Alexander and Frederick Barbarossa in Venice
earlier that year.143
The legend of the trumpets was, in fact, one among several that attributed
most of the insigne or symbols of the doge to gifts from Alexander.
As one would expect, these legends served repeatedly as the basis of
pictorial representations of central events in Venetian history. A large
painting by Giulio del Moro showing Doge Ziani kneeling at the feet
of Alexander III is one among several paintings on this theme adorning
the walls in the Great Council Hall of the doge's palace.144

8.2
The history of the doge's trumpets is obscure, but certainly more complicated
than the legend. The first documentation regarding these trumpets is
in the promissione ducale, or oath of office, of Doge Jacopo
Tiepolo in 1229, wherein the new doge agrees to pay for three silver
trumpets made for St. Mark's that will be housed in the ducal palace.145
Martin da Canal reports that the Easter processions during the reign
of doge Ranieri Zeno (1253–1268) featured six silver trumpets,
and the promissione of Doge Giovanni Dandolo in 1289 contains
an expense for six trumpets.146
According to Sansovino, there were originally four trumpets, but two
were added in 1289. They weighed 24 marche, and in 1318 they
were enlarged to 30 marche for greater dignity. They were formerly
as long as normal trumpets, but Nicolo Marcello had them rebuilt in
1473 (only completed in 1478) to the size they were in 1581 at the time
of Sansovino's writing.147
Marin Sanudo reports that in 1524 Doge Andrea Gritti had them rebuilt
again, this time of silver instead of the copper of which they had previously
been constructed (prima erano di rame), and that they sounded
well.148
On the other hand, almost three centuries earlier, Canal, as indicated
above, had already described the trumpets as being made of silver. [Return
to note 346.]

8.3
These six trombe lunghe, or trombe d'argento,are
the ones employed in the ducal corteo, and from the late fifteenth
century they were apparently something quite separate from and longer
than the approximately eight-foot straight trumpets of other cities.
They could only be used in processions requiring the participation of
the doge, they functioned as traditional symbols of civic and ducal
authority, and they occupied a special position in the cortege. It is
not even clear that they were played in all epochs of Venetian history,
but in some periods may have served simply as visual symbols.149

8.4
Although the trombe d'argento were among the symbols of ducal
authority, the appearance of the trombe d'argento in a procession
did not always mean that the doge himself was present. On unusual occasions,
such as when the doge was ill, the Signoria processed as normal,
but without the doge. The trombe d'argento and the pifferi
still participated, but several of the symbols of the doge were omitted
when he himself was unable personally to attend.150

9. Trombe
d'argento and the Busine

9.1
The trombe d'argento del doge clearly have their origins in the
long busine of the middle ages and early Renaissance.151
The iconographical record of trumpets in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries shows these kinds of instruments in use all over Europe. The
context of such images is often allegorical or symbolic, but may show
quite realistically the instruments depicted. A case in point is a miniature
in British Library Ms. Add. 18851, known as the Isabella Breviary, which
presents a group of musicians on the steps of a church-like building.152
According to James McKinnon, this illustration could appropriately be
titled, "An introductory illustration to the gradual psalms; levitical
musicians play on the steps of the Temple at Jerusalem, while King David
looks on and David as pilgrim mounts the steps."153
While the theme of the miniature is allegorical, the instruments and
the clothing of the musicians appear quite realistic, and the long busine
is probably an accurate representation of the size and shape of such
an instrument.

9.2
Indeed, a very similar instrument is depicted in an allegorical drawing
known as "A Scene of Sacrifice" by the Paduan artist Domenico Campagnola
from c. 1514, now in the Uffizi Gallery.154
Long busine, but without the usual knob where the bell segment
is joined to the principal tube, can be seen in a drawing by Lorenzo
Lotto of "Festivities in Honor of Padua" (Figure
5).155
This drawing, now in the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, has been variously
dated at c. 1528–30 or c. 1535–38. Such instruments were
not confined to outdoor use. A miniature by an anonymous French illustrator
of the fourteenth century shows two very long busine playing
Tafelmusik together with bagpipes at a banquet.156

9.3
The busine was also a principal military trumpet of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and it can be seen employed by soldiers on
horseback leading Christ through the streets of a fanciful Jerusalem
on the way to Calvary in a drawing, now in the Louvre, from the sketchbooks
of the Venetian Jacopo Bellini from around the mid-fifteenth century.157
There is no reason to believe that these long busine in Jacopo's
drawing do not represent the kind of instruments that would have led
a military or other important procession in Bellini's day. Indeed, they
closely resemble the trumpets in Gentile Bellini's Processione della
Croce in Piazza San Marco of 1496, discussed below. The typology
of one or more trumpeters on horseback leading Christ to Calvary survived
well into the eighteenth century, as can be seen in a painting by Giambattista
Tiepolo in Sant'Alvise in Venice.158
A prominent example of the military function of such busine (though
not as long as in the Jacopo Bellini example) occupies the very center
of Vittore Carpaccio's "Martyrdom of the pilgrims and funeral of Saint
Ursula" of 1493 from his cycle of Saint Ursula, originally in the Scuola
di Sant'Orsola, but now housed together with other paintings from this
cycle in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (Figure
6).159
[Return to paragraph 31.1.]

9.4
Peter Downey has equated the Venetian trombe lunghe d'argento
with the straight trumpets of the German courts.160
But the Venetian trombe lunghe were different in function, and
after 1478, in size. The straight trumpets of German courts served to
announce the presence of the prince, especially in processions and other
ceremonies, but the trombe d'argento were only one among several
symbols associated not with the personage of the doge per se,
but with ducal authority as embodying the civic polity and defined by
specific laws, ordinances and restrictions.161
Unlike the German courts headed by the personal authority of hereditary
rulers where symbols such as trumpets served to emphasize rank and dynastic
rule, the trappings of the doge were clearly symbols of the continuity
and power of the city itself.162
The doge could not even exit the palace except when accompanied by the
Signoria.163
The other, equally important emblems of civic authority attached to
the doge were named in the Cerimoniale del doge, were described
by Sansovino, and appear prominently in a woodcut by Matteo Pagan and
an engraving by Giacomo Franco, described in sections
17 and 19.
The relative sizes of German heraldic trumpets and the Venetian trombe
lunghe d'argento were also different. No instruments of the length
of the Venetian trombe, as depicted by Pagan and Franco, requiring
the additional support of boys, are recorded anywhere else in Europe.

10. Pifferi
in Venetian Ducal Processions

10.1
The official ensemble of pifferi was also under the jurisdiction
of the doge. The earliest surviving document mentioning the pifferi
is the same promissione of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo of 1229 where
we find the first definitive evidence of the trombe d'argento.164
A document of 1460 establishes a pay scale for the pifferi and
trombetti and the means for paying them.165
Three years later another document set the ensemble at five, consisting
of tre piffari e do trombetti, and raised their salaries as well
as those of the trumpeters. At this early date, the term trombetti
very likely refers to single-slide trumpets, since U-shaped double-slide
trombones, which formed part of the ensemble by the end of the century,
were as yet probably unknown.166
By 1494 the pifferi numbered six.167
The size of the ensemble ranged over time between four and nine players.168
Aside from sometimes playing in the ducal church of St. Mark's,169
playing for official functions, playing at banquets, and playing for
balls, the pifferi formed part of every ducal procession in their
own distinct garments and fixed position in the cortege.

10.2
Despite the fact that all of the iconographical representations of instruments
comprising the pifferi del doge discussed below show the ensemble
to be made up of shawms and trombones, documents suggest that as elsewhere
in Italy, the shawms began to be replaced by cornettos, at least for
indoor performance, by the early sixteenth century. In 1566, one of
the members of this ensemble was specifically identified as a cornettist,
and Giovanni Bassano, who joined the doge's pifferi in 1576,
was also famous for his playing of cornettos and pifferi.170
A seventeenth-century document refers to cornettos playing at the Elevation
during the doge's coronation (an event when the doge's pifferi regularly
played in St. Mark's), and the instrumental ensemble of St. Mark's itself
(separate from the pifferi del doge) comprised only cornettos
and trombones as winds from its inception in 1568.171
It seems highly unlikely that the doge's windband continued to play
shawms in St. Mark's and for banquets and dancing in the palace when
shawms had been replaced by cornettos for such purposes not only elsewhere
in Italy, but also elsewhere in Venice.172
If this is true, then the pifferidel doge probably played
two different sets of instruments by the mid-sixteenth century and perhaps
earlier, depending on the occasion. For performances in St. Mark's and
in the palace, the ensemble would have consisted of cornettos and trombones,
while for processions outdoors (including the indoor component of many
processions that originated outdoors), the cornettos would have been
replaced by the louder and more penetrating shawms. [Return to
note 273, paragraph
34.5.]

11. Other
Instruments in Ducal Processions

11.1
While the trombe d'argento and the pifferi constituted
the official instruments of the doge and were always present during
a ducal procession in trionfo, processional instruments were
not limited to just the doge's trombe d'argento and pifferi.
Numerous accounts also mention a separate contingent of trumpets and
drums which are often described as comprising two pairs of six each:
i.e., twelve trumpeters and twelve drummers.173
The presence and position of such trumpets and drums, unlike the doge's
instrumentalists and the various classes of dignitaries, were not regulated
by the elaborate protocols pertaining to the doge's corteo. In
those processions where the doge's trombe d'argento and pifferi
were not present (as in funzioni senza onori) or the trumpets
did not actually sound (as suggested by Grevembroch for part of their
history), a body of trumpeters and drummers might have been the principal
vehicle for announcing the approach of a procession that was making
its way from one part of the city to another.174
Visiting dignitaries were likewise often met by smaller or larger processions
representing the doge and the state which escorted them to the ducal
palace and then to their lodgings with the sound of trumpets.175
As noted above, processions could contain a large number of elements,
depending on the occasion,176
and when processions included the scuole grandi and the scuole
piccole, the scuole brought with them their own singers and
instrumentalists, sometimes including trumpets.177

11.2
A characteristic late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century ensemble
of instruments employed by the scuole grandi in ducal and other
processions as well as in the culminating mass in their patron church
consisted of a hand-held harp, a rebec or other bowed string instrument,
and a lute.178
This ensemble became obsolete by 1530–1535, and pay records of
the scuole grandi demonstrate that it was replaced by a group
of string instruments of the violin family, usually six, which were
hired beginning in the 1530s and 1540s to participate in processions
and ultimately other functions of the scuole in addition to,
but separate from the wind instruments.179
[Return to paragraph 13.3.]

11.3
Additional trumpets, drums and other instruments were not the only factors
contributing to the sound of processions. Volleys of rifle, blunderbuss
or artillery fire, the ringing of church bells and the explosion of
fireworks were also common accoutrements to processions.180
Processions were a major contributor to Venetian identity and civic
pride, unifying the city divided by innumerable canals through their
dazzling visual display and sometimes deafening auditory components
that traveled far over the waters beyond the sight of the corteo
itself.

12. Trumpets
and Pifferi in St. Mark's and other Major Churches

12.1
St. Mark's occupied a unique position in Venice, not as the cathedral,
which was San Pietro di Castello located far from the center of the
city, but rather as the private chapel of the doge.181
In contrast to many other European cities, where the cathedral was located
in the main square and was a principal focus of civic attention, in
Venice it was the basilica of the doge in the Piazza San Marco that
occupied center stage for religious and civic ceremonies.182
As the doge's private chapel, liturgical and administrative matters
were under the ultimate jurisdiction of the doge, though the ecclesiastical
leadership was entrusted to the primicerio and the administrative
leadership to a group of nine procuratori, chosen for life.183
Processions were not only conducted out of doors in St. Mark's Square
(comprising both the piazza and the piazzetta) but also inside the basilica.
This held true for other Venetian churches as well. Thus trumpets and
pifferi entered the sanctuaries themselves and at times participated
in one way or another in the sacred service, whether mass or vespers.184
A document from 1460 attests to the use of trumpets and pifferi in
ceremonies, possibly inside St. Mark's itself.185
On December 9, 1512, a solemn mass was celebrated at the high altar
of St. Mark's with trombe e pifari.186
During a victory celebration on September 20, 1515 psalms were sung
to the populace in the piazza from above the entrance to St. Mark's
to the sound of trombe, pifari, corneti e altri instrumenti musici.187
A baptism of a bastard son was celebrated in Santa Maria Formosa on
April 20, 1517 con gran triumpho,accompanied by trombe,
pifari and "all the music that one could find."188
In 1524 a procession with eight battle trumpets and the doge's trombe
etpifferi entered into St. Mark's.189
The doge's pifferi participated in the service celebrating the
anniversary of the election of the doge in 1542 and later that year
during the Christmas season as well.190
In 1548 a dispute over the performance of vespers at the monastery of
San Giobbe records that the first psalm was contracted to be played
by a group of pifferi, but because one of the instrumentalists
didn't appear, the fifth part was taken by a singer.191
The ceremoniale for St. Mark's, compiled between 1559 and 1564
by BartolomeoBonifacio, describes the use of piffari in
a procession in the church and before the Epistle as well as cornettos
at the Elevation.192
The cerimoniale also calls for the celebration of the feast of
Saint Nicholas in a chapel between the church and the ducal palace accompanied
by the pifferi del doge, who substitute for the organ and play
standing outside the door of the chapel.193
The coronation of Doge Giovanni Bembo in 1615 involved a mass col
suono delle Trombe all'Elevatione.194Since some of the ceremonies at St. Mark's involved elaborate entries
into and exits from the basilica, trumpets also sounded directly outside
the church and even from the roof over the portal.195
[Return to: paragraph 12.4, 34.2.]

12.2
One especially grand occasion involved Giovanni Rovetta, the Vice
maestro di cappella of St. Mark's, who composed a concerted mass
that he conducted in the Palladian church of San Giorgio Maggiore (on
the island of San Giorgio, directly across the bacino from St.
Mark's square) to celebrate the birth of the future Louis XIV of France
in 1638.196
The official published account of the ceremonies mentions musical instruments
in several capacities.197
Upon their arrival at the church, the company was greeted with a noisy
reception produced by mortars, canons, trumpets, drums, pifferi,
and viole (members of the violin family).198
Singers and instrumentalists performed both together and separately
in the mass itself.199
At the Elevation, mortars, canons, trumpets, drums, pifferi,
and violoni (another term for members of the violin family) echoed
through the air in the square immediately in front of the church.200
At the end of mass, as the company exited from the church, a psalm was
sung, trumpets were again sounded, and mortars and canons were fired
after the company embarked in gondolas and traversed the grand canal.201
The subsequent festivities and banquet in the ducal palace were accompanied
by viole, pifari, and other musical instruments, and trumpets,
drums, and pifferi sounded from the courtyard of the palace.
The toasting of the King of France was accompanied not only by the noise
of all the instruments, but also by the firing of eighty large mortars.202 [Return to paragraph 35.2.]

12.3
Despite all the verbal accounts of trumpets in St. Mark's and the eventual
appointment of trumpeters to the instrumental ensemble, we are aware
of only one pictorial representation of a trumpet inside the basilica
itself. An early seventeenth-century painting by Giovanni Le Clerc in
the Great Council Hall of the doge's palace depicts the oath of Doge
Enrico Dandolo and the military captains as they prepare to embark upon
the Fourth Crusade in 1198 (Figure
7).203
The scene, witnessed by the Patriarch and other church officials, is
turbulent, conveying the excitement and energy of purpose of those engaged
in the event. In the center foreground is a single figure with a folded
trumpet hanging behind his back from a sash around his waist (Figure
8). Obviously, the folded trumpet is anachronistic for the time
period represented, but the presence of a trumpet does not even necessarily
mean that in the mind of Le Clerc such an instrument would have been
played during whatever service accompanied this oath-taking. Rather,
the trumpet may simply have served as a symbol for the military significance
of this event. [Return to paragraph
45.3.]

12.4
It is apparent that the use of trumpets and pifferi at St. Mark's
and other churches in Venice was not limited only to the occasions for
which we have documentation. Such documentation simply establishes the
types of ceremonies for which trumpets and pifferi may have been
quite regularly employed, i.e., at mass or in a Te Deum honoring
any event, personage or feast requiring a specially joyous celebration.
But instruments may also have taken part in services at St. Mark's on
a fairly frequent basis at least as early as the beginning of the second
quarter of the sixteenth century and perhaps much earlier. Trombe
e pifari had played at the Elevation during mass in the chapel of
St. Nicholas as early as December 6, 1500 (see paragraph
12.1).204
A prohibition against the use of instruments in church issued by the
Patriarch of Venice in 1528 specifically exempted St. Mark's, which
was under the doge's, not the Patriarch's jurisdiction.205
There would have been no need to mention St. Mark's at all if instruments
were not being used there. The Patriarch's prohibition against instruments
in other churches was ignored in 1529, when tybicines et sonatores
cum tybiis, cornibus et aliis sonis et cantibus inhonestis, participated
in a service at the church of Sant'Aponal, prompting the Patriarch's
reprimand.206
By the 1560s, instrumental participation in services at St. Mark's was
common. Sometime before 1560, Annibale Padovano, first hired in 1552
as an organist in St. Mark's, had organized an instrumental ensemble
that played when the doge and the Senate, dressed in purple, entered
the church.207
Instrumental ensembles were also hired for Christmas in 1563 and Christmas
and Easter in 1564.208
Bartolomeo Bonifacio's 1564 ceremoniale for St. Mark's declares
that "in every major solemnity, the singers sing with the organ or the
instrumentalists play."209

12.5Just four years later, on January 29, 1568, a group of pifferi
comprising the famous cornettist Girolamo dalla Casa from Udine and
his two brothers was contracted to play as salaried employees at St.
Mark's for a series of specified feasts. From this point onward, St.
Mark's regularly utilized cornettos and trombones, and later violins
and a violone, in sacred services.210
The practice of hiring extra instrumentalists for particularly important
celebrations continued, and both the salaried ensemble and the number
of ad hoc instrumentalists increased substantially in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.211
When and in what manner the pifferi del doge may have also participated
in services at St. Mark's after the basilica established its own instrumental
ensemble is unclear, but at the very least, as participants in ducal
processions, they played during these processions inside the church.
They also played for ceremonies in the basilica celebrating the election
of a new doge and the anniversary of the doge's election.212

12.6
At some point the pifferi del doge were absorbed into the pifferi
of St. Mark's. In 1614, Giovanni Bassano, the leader of the instrumentalists
(capo dei concerti) at St. Mark's since 1601, formed a union
of six of the instrumentalists (eleven instrumentalists were placed
on the regular payroll on December 7, 1614) in order to share among
themselves the opportunities for external income from masses, vespers,
compline, and the Forty Hours devotion at other churches and the scuole
as well as from weddings.213
On November 24, Bassano submitted a petition to the doge for the formation
of the union, which the doge referred to the Primicerio of St.
Mark's for his opinion. In the petition, Bassano lists himself and his
five companions by name as "players of your Excellency . . . all six
of us players designated as trombones and pifferi of your Excellency."214
By dividing fairly the outside opportunities, competition and contention
among the members for extra income could be avoided. The request notes
that the ensemble's salary came from the doge and the Procuratoria de
Supra.215
Traditionally, the doge paid the salaries of his trombe d'argento
and pifferi. The Procuratoria was responsible for the financial
management of St. Mark's, including the salaries of the musicians, so
the salaries of Bassano's ensemble were a combination of the two funding
sources. In the by-laws of the union, submitted October 22, 1616, the
ensemble is referred to as "the aforementioned six players of your Excellency"
at one point,216
and at another the six members are named individually and described
as "trombones and pifferi of your Excellency and of your ducal
chapel and church of St. Mark's."217
Toward the end of the by-laws, the reference is made to the ensemble
"who are salaried and serve in the ducal chapel of St. Mark's."218
A list of eighteen instrumentalists (not including organists) at St.
Mark's compiled between March 5 and August 24, 1616, a few months before
the submission of the union's by-laws, includes all of the names of
the union members except one.219
This union remained in force through the middle of the century, and
its activities demonstrate that the Patriarch's attempt in 1528 to prohibit
or at least limit instrumental participation in other churches obviously
did not last long, for by the time of its formation, and certainly considerably
earlier, the salaried instrumentalists at St. Mark's were being hired
out on a regular basis to play in other churches as well as in the scuole.
[Return to paragraph 13.4, note
169.]

12.7
As we have seen, during the course of the sixteenth century cornettos
gradually replaced shawms in pifferi bands all over Italy, without
necessarily banishing the latter instruments altogether, especially
for outdoor performances. With regard to Venice, the combination of
two cornettos and four trombones is described as early as 1505 in a
letter from Giovanni Alvise Trombon, a member of the doge's pifferi,
to the Marquis Francesco II Gonzaga in Mantua. In this letter, Giovanni,
son of Zorzi Trombetta of Venice, announces that he is sending the Marquis
several arrangements of motets for instruments; one of these is for
four trombones and two cornettos.220A member of the pifferi del doge cited in a document of 1520
was Giovanni Maria Bernardi called "del cornetto."221
Girolamo della Casa, head of the wind band at St. Mark's, was famous
as a cornetto virtuoso. We are not aware of any document of the Cinquecento
or first half of the Seicento at St. Mark's referring to wind
instrumentsthat identifies any instruments other than cornettos
and trombones.222
The cornettos, however, gave way to violins in the 1620s and 1630s.
Missing the sound of the cornetto, the procurators of St. Mark's, beginning
in 1640, made a significant effort to revive it, including the hiring
of someone to teach the instrument.223
They were evidently successful in revitalizing the cornetto, for it
remained an important element of the ensemble throughout much of the
century, together with trombones, strings, bassoons and theorboes.224
Francesco Cavalli's will of 1675 lists the instruments for his requiem
mass as two violins, four viole, two cornettos, trombones, bassoon,
two theorboes, a violon grosso and three organs, with the performers
to be drawn from the best players of St. Mark's and the city.225

12.8
Trumpeters were still employed at St. Mark's with some frequency on
an ad hoc basis for the liturgical celebrations of military conquests
and other militaristic events, even after the middle of the seventeenth
century when two trumpeters were appointed as salaried members of the
instrumental ensemble, the first by 1664 and the second by 1689.226
Pay records of the procurators show trumpeters and drummers as well
as extra pifferi hired in February 1690 (new style) for festivities
in honor of Pope Alessandro VIII, and a dozen trumpeters and drummers
were hired in January 1691 (new style) for the celebration of the conquest
of Valon. In April 1694, a large contingent of trumpeters and drummers
was hired to honor Doge Francesco Morosini as he departed on a military
expedition for the Levant, and in November 1694 twelve trumpeters were
hired to play in the mass and Te Deum when Venice acquired Scio
(Chio).227
[Return to paragraph 34.2.]

13. The
Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole grandi

13.1As already noted, some ducal processions included Venice's six
large confraternities, the scuole grandi. Moreover, not all Venetian
processions were ducal processions—many were initiated by the
scuole grandi themselves, especially on the feast day of the
titular saint of the church with which each scuola was associated,
on the first Sunday of each month and on a number of other occasions.228
There are no known state protocols regarding the order of elements in
the segments of a procession before or after the official ducal cortege
or for those processions that were not state functions, though at least
one scuola had its own ordine, and it is virtually certain
that others did too.229
Processions by the scuole were frequent and could wend their
way through large portions of the city, sometimes making various stops
for the singing of laude on the way to their final destination.230
From descriptions, archival records and iconographical representations
of such processions, it is clear that singers and instrumentalists often
took part and participated in the liturgical services with which these
processions invariably culminated. Numerous pay records show unequivocally
that up to the 1530s, a string ensemble comprising a lute, a harp and
a viola (rebec) was used by each scuola and that trombe e
pifferi often participated in the processions and in the liturgical
services.231
[Return to paragraph 16.2.]

13.2Trombe had been used in processions and sacred services by Venice's
scuole grandi since at least 1470, and undoubtedly much earlier.232
The term tromba, however, like trombetta, had become equivocal
by the second half of the fifteenth century. In the first part of the
century it meant a trumpet, which could take the form of a straight
trumpet of full length or lesser size, an S-shaped trumpet, a folded
trumpet, or any shape of single-slide trumpet, but as double-slide instrumentsdeveloped in the second half of the century, the term tromba
also doubled as a reference to what was also called a trombone.233
A player of the tromba is listed as a member of the Scuola San
Marco in 1470, and the scuola hired five instrumentalists (three
pifari and two tromboni) to play at specified feasts in
February of 1503 (new style), by which time the term trombone clearly
meant a U-shaped double-slide instrument.234
For the Scuola San Marco, the use of trombe, together with pifferi,
not only in processions but also in masses on the first Sunday of each
month, is documented from 1515.235
In order to save money in hard times, the trombe and pifferi
were dropped as permanently salaried employees by the Scuola in 1527,
though they still could be hired on an occasional basis.236
In 1525, a visitor wrote that a solemn mass at the Scuola San Rocco
was performed ("fu cantata") not with voices, but on pifferi.237
A 1530 document from the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia
refers to trombe, e pifari et corneti et eziam organo participating
in a mass said before the dispensation of dowries to the daughters of
deceased brothers of the Scuola.238

13.3The ambiguity of terminology makes it impossible in most instances
to be certain when trombe refers to trumpets and when to trombones,
but a prohibition emanating from the Patriarch in 1639 against the use
of trumpets and drumsin services of the scuole piccole
(see paragraph 14.5) strongly
suggests that such instruments were used by the scuole grandi
as well. It seems inconceivable that the scuole grandi, with
their emphasis on grandiose public display and much larger budgets for
such matters,would have made more limited use of instrumental
resources than the scuole piccole.The records of the
scuolegrandi also show that other instruments formed
a regular part of the musical contingent.239
By the 1530s and 1540s, ensembles of strings were favored by the scuole
in processions (see paragraph
11.2), though trombe e pifferi were still used in the liturgy.
As time went by, strings increasingly supplanted winds in liturgical
services, but winds still continued in use well into the seventeenth
century.240
After the plague of 1630–31, the hiring of prominent musicians
from St. Mark's and elsewhere declined, though some festive events were
still occasionally celebrated with the former pomp. In the early eighteenth
century, the Scuola di San Rocco hired numerous instrumentalists from
St. Mark's, including a trumpeter and an oboist, to perform in the procession,
a passion in the church of San Rocco, and music at the Scuola on the
patronal feast.241

13.4In 1553, the Council of Ten, in response to a complaint by the
Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità about a union of singers that
had recently been formed at St. Mark's to regulate participation in
and fees for outside performances, attempted to reduce the expenditures
for music by abolishing the union and prohibiting the scuole
from hiring singers on the grounds that the scuole spent money
on music that should have gone to the poor. The other scuole protested
the regulation, citing psalm ninety-seven's injunction to "psallite
Domino in cithara et voce psalmi in tubis ductilibus et voce tube cornee."The scuolewere supported in their protest by the
musicians themselves, who complained that their own salaries were so
low as to barely escape poverty. After much debate and an appeal from
the Procuratori, the Council eventually rescinded its earlier decision
and simply limited the amount of money each scuola could spend
annually on singers.242
This attempt at forming a union of singers laid the groundwork for later
unions of instrumentalists and of singers for the same purpose of eliminating
competition and dissension with regard to outside employment on an occasional
basis. Decrees by the Heads of the Council of Ten in the 1580s attempted
to resolve further such disputes by apportioning companies of instrumentalists
among the scuole.243
The instrumentalists' union of Giovanni Bassano, described in paragraph
12.6, was the most long-lived of such efforts. [Return to
note 213.]

13.5
Whatever limitations on the pomp of regularly scheduled processions
the scuole might have imposed in response to the legislation
of the Council of Ten, special events always elicited lavish spectacle.
An account by Giovanni Stringa of a celebration on the 26th of July,
1598, honoring the peace between Henry IV of France and Phillip II of
Spain, describes the procession by the scuole grandi, giving
details of each scuola and its elaborate, hand-carried floats
(solari). The fifth scuola in this procession was that
of San Rocco, and among its floats was one representing the spreading
of Fame throughout the world by means of a richly dressed youth playing
a tromba squarciata da guerra. The boy had one foot on a replica
of the world, and the other foot balanced in the air. No drum is mentioned
in the description, but the military association of the tromba squarciata
is clear. Immediately following this float came a series of floats representing
the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and America, across which the
fame of the current peace was disseminated symbolically by the tromba
squarciata da guerra.244
[Return to: paragraph 29.2,
34.6, 35.2.]

14. The
Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole piccole

14.1
The scuole grandi were only six in number, but Venice also hosted
other small and sometimes quite large confraternities known collectively
as the scuole piccole, which numbered more than two hundred in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.245
These confraternities likewise sponsored processions and elaborate liturgical
celebrations, principally on the feasts of their patron saints, though
sometimes on other occasions as well.246Pifferi and tromboni are frequently found on their membership
lists.247
Instrumentalists took part in their festivities from a very early stage;
in 1373 it was already necessary for the Scuola di San Giovanni Battista
to reduce the number of instrumentalists who had received free membership
in return for their musical services.248
Many scuole also limited the amount of money they could spend
on musicians.249
The 1420 protocol for the annual patronal procession of the Scuola di
San Giovanni Battista e Sant'Ambrogio dei Milanesi required four trombe
e trombetti e nacharini (small kettle drums).250
Likewise, the undated mariegola (by-laws)of the Scuola
dei Milanese requires that festal processions be accompanied by quatro
trombe e trombete e nacharini.251
Here the association with nacharini obviously suggests trumpets,
and at this early date, neither trombe nor its diminutive trombetti
could refer to double-slide trombones. The distinction between the
two terms suggests long straight trumpets versus shorter trumpets, possibly
S-shaped, single-slide, or mid-size instruments of approximately half
the length of the trombe, pitched an octave higher. Trombetti
even could have referred to folded instruments whose tube length would
have been the same as long straight trumpets, but which gave the appearance
of being smaller instruments.

14.2
The early fifteenth-century mariegola of the Scuola della Beata
Vergine Assunta in the church of San Stae calls for the hiring of two
trombe, two pifferi and one drummer for the feast of Santa
Maria della Gratia.252
The 1442 mariegola of the Scuola di San Francesco declares that
pifari et tronbeti must be hired to celebrate Vespers and Mass,
as was customary on February 2, the Feast of the Purification of the
Virgin.253
Once again the early date of both documents means that the terms trombe
and tronbeti must refer to trumpets of some kind.

14.3
Beginning in 1502, the Scuola del Venerabile Sacramento in the church
of San Giuliano paid a group of wind players annually on the Feast of
Corpus Christi.254
In about 1506, the pifferi del doge, comprising three pifari
and three tromboni,became members of the Scuola di Santa
Maria dei Mercanti.255
Documents pertaining to the Scuola di San Teodoro, which was one of
the scuole piccole until 1552, when it became officially numbered
among the scuole grandi, mention trombe epifferi
in a procession on December 15, 1490 and trombetti e pifferi
on December 13, 1537.256
The corteo marched to San Marco and the Rialto to announce the
feast. In the first instance, trombe could refer to either trumpets
or trombones, though given the event, trumpets are certainly possible.
In the second instance, trombetti much more likely refers to
trumpets of some kind.257
In 1516 and 1517, the Scuola di Sant'Orsola hired six tronbetti ett
[sic] pifari for the vigil and the day of the feast of St.
Ursula, not only to play for first and second vespers and the mass,
but also for a procession from San Marco to the Rialto.258
Processions by the scuole to San Marco and the Rialto, accompanied
by tronbe e pifari, were commonplace and served to invite the
populace and the scuola's membership to its host church to honor
its patron saint.259

14.4
During the sixteenth century, the Scuola della Trinità regularly
engaged musicians from St. Mark's and other well-known players for their
feast.260
In 1604 the Scuola della Beata Vergine Assunta began celebrating a musical
Compline with salaried singers and instrumentalists. In 1626 they reduced
the number of instrumentalists, eliminating the trombone as superfluous.261
In the late sixteenth century, the nuns of the convent of Spirito Santo
complained that because of the obstinacy of the guardian of the Scuola
dello Spirito Santo, the first day's Pentecost celebrations had not
been performed with the customary pomp, including hired singers and
instrumentalists who were to have participated in the mass.262
In 1637 the Scuola and convent hired Francesco Cavalli at an expensive
rate to provide music and musicians for the three days of elaborate
Pentecost celebrations.263
The year before Cavalli had also been hired to provide similar services
for the founding of the Scuola di San Domenico di Soriano, festivities
which included the participation of tamburin e tronbete.264
Further documents of the Scuola dello Spirito Santo demonstrate ongoing
problems and preoccupation with the expenses and character of the music
for Pentecost throughout the seventeenth century.265
The contract of the maestro di cappella in 1691 for the annual
Pentecost music called for a choir of twelve (three on a part) as well
as "three organs, a violone, two violas da gamba, four violins, four
violas, two cornettos, a theorbo, and a trumpet," all hired from St.
Mark's.266

14.5It is obvious that in the early seventeenth century some of the
scuole piccole performed music in their host churches as sumptuous
as that produced by the scuole grandi.267
The frequency of trumpet playing in the host churches prompted the Provveditori
di Comun, at the request of the Patriarch of Venice, to warn the
scuole piccole on April 1, 1639 to correct a number of excesses
and abuses, including avoiding the use in sacred services of trumpets
and drums, which were more suitable for armies than the house of God.268
Such admonitions usually had limited effect: in 1641 and 1642 the Scuola
di Santa Catterina di Siena paid large sums of money for music at their
annual feast, hiring in the latter year Natale Monferrato, later vice
maestro di cappella and maestro di cappella at St. Mark's,
to provide the music.269
[Return to paragraph 13.3.]

14.6There are no surviving documents regarding the order of elements
in processions of the scuole piccole in Venice, but the Scuola
di Sant'Antonio di Padova in Paduahad a protocol for
the order of its processions, and it is very likely that other scuole
in Padua and Venice did as well.270
Although the order of procession for the Scuola di Sant'Antonio di Padova
does not mention musical instruments, it is nevertheless quite probable
that trumpets and pifferi, possibly with the addition of drums,
led the procession and participated in the liturgical service, as in
so many other documented cases.271

14.7
The quantity of records from as early as the fourteenth century suggests
that such processions involving trumpets and pifferi, sometimes
also including nacharini, were typical. These same instruments
very likely also participated in the mass and vesper services of the
scuole even prior to their frequent documentation in sacred services
from the late fifteenth century.272
The list of participants in musical activities by the scuole (mostly
scuole piccole) published by Elena Quaranta covering the period
1373–1613 sometimes lists trombetti e piffari (also pifferi
or pifari), more frequently trombe e piffari, occasionally
trombe, piffari e nacharini, sometimes simply suonatori
or cantori e suonatori, rarely cantori alone, and
sometimes even just musicisti. Some of these entries are too
early for the term tromba to refer to an instrument with a slide,
but by the fifteenth century a single-slide instrument could have been
meant by tromba or trombetta when mentioned in connection
with pifferi. The word trombone doesn't appear in these
pay records as a distinct item, though single-slide instruments were
possibly subsumed under the term pifferi in the early fifteenth
century, and double-slide trombones could also have been included in
the same word by the end of the fifteenth century. Pifferi is
the most ambiguous and imprecise among many problematic terms for instruments
in this period. The pifferi employed by the scuole were
not limited to shawms or cornettos and trombones as in the pifferi
del doge. In earlier times, the principal instruments would indeed
have been shawms, gradually supplemented or replaced by cornettos in
the sixteenth century as cornettos became more popular. However, other
instruments could also take part in an ensemble of pifferi, such
as trombones, bagpipes, recorders, cross flutes, and viols.273
Thus the pifferi could be a mixed bag of mostly wind instruments,
depending on the occasion and what instrumentalists were available for
hire. Strings were likely added to the winds in processions, just as
they were in the scuole grandi, and the 1691 document from the
Scuola dello Spirito Santo cited in paragraph 14.4 demonstrates that
strings became major participants in the liturgical services of the
scuole piccole as well. [Return to note
13.]

15. Funeral
Processions and Ceremonies

15.1
Trumpets and drums were common accompaniments to funeral processions
in northern Europe, as can be seen in a well-known engraving of the
burial ceremony of Charles V at Brussels in 1558, the original by Wellens
de Cock.274
This engraving shows fourteen trumpeters holding folded trumpets, each
with a banner appended, two men carrying kettledrums both in front and
at their backs, and a director of the ensemble. How the drums on the
drummers' backs might have been played is suggested by another engraving
from the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels of trumpeters and drummers
assembled for a funeral procession at the court of Archduke Albrecht,
Governor of the Netherlands, in the early seventeenth century.275
This illustration shows twelve unusually large folded trumpets, kettledrums
affixed to the front and back of two men, and two other men carrying
mallets, who are obviously the players of the drums appended to the
backs of their predecessors.276
While the trumpets in these engravings are not muted, muted trumpets
were commonly used in funeral processions throughout Europe in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, including Florence and Naples.277
A small late seventeenth-century painting by Alessandro Piazza in the
Museo Correr in Venice depicts a military funeral procession, "The Transport
of the Body of the Doge [Francesco Morosini, 1688–94] from Napoli
di Romania" (Figure
9). About halfway back in the procession are eight trumpeters playing
straight trumpets about three feet long followed by two drummers (Figure
10).278
[Return to note 358.]

15.2
We have almost no information regarding trumpets or other musical instruments
in funeral processions in Venice itself. Both Sansovino and Stringa
wrote extensively about the protocols and order of funeral processions
of persons of various rank, but no instruments are named by either.279
Since the funerals of doges emphasized the continuity of state authority
rather than the former role of the deceased, it is virtually certain
that the trombe d'argento would not have participated in any
funeral procession of a doge.280
A large eighteenth-century painting of a doge's funeral at San Giovanni
e Paolo by GabrielBella from the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia
illustrates a large crowd participating in the procession, but no musical
instruments nor any other symbols of ducal authority are visible. 281
In times of plague, as in 1630–31, it was essential to bury immediately
the bodies of those who died from the disease in order to avoid further
contagion, and elaborate funerals, like other large gatherings of the
populace, would generally have been avoided. Music played a role in
the frequent funeral processions of the scuole grandi, but often
consisted of no more than simple singing of unspecified music by the
least well-trained musicians of the scuole. There is no evidence
of the use of instruments by the scuole for funeral processions.282

15.3Funeral liturgical ceremonies, however, could indeed use instruments.
In 1675 the will of Francesco Cavalli, maestro di capella at
St. Mark's, requested a concertato Requiem mass in the church of San
Lorenzo with the best singers and instrumentalists of the chapel and
the city, to be directed by the maestro di capella of St. Mark's.
Cavalli even lists the required instrumentation: two violins, four viole,
two cornettos, two theorboes, trombones, a bassoon, a violone, and three
organs.283
[Return to note 225.]

References
to Part II

126Muir,
Civic Ritual, 60. It is clear, however, from the description
of Roman cavalcades and official Bolognese processions cited in note
82 and quoted in Document
2 that Venice sometimes had competition from elsewhere in the lavishness
of processions.

128
Between 1267 and 1275 Martin da Canal compiled a chronicle in French
that includes a number of descriptions of ducal ceremonies and processions
featuring six silver trumpets. See Martin da Canal, Les Estoires
de Venise, ed. Alberto Limentani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore,
1972), 246–63. For Canal's full text describing the Easter procession,
see Document 5.
For a reference of 15 November, 1361 to sumptuary legislation by the
Senate limiting the use of trumpets during the feast of the Marys,
see Fiati: Il sezione antichi libri e strumenti moderni, 49–50,
item 16. The feast of the Marys was an eight-day festival from January
25, the Feast of St. Paul, to February 2, the Feast of the Purification,
concluding with a procession in boats. A description of the feast
of the Marys is found in Giulio Bistort, Il Magistrato alle pompe
nella republica di Venezia (Venice, 1912; facs ed. Bologna: Forni
Editore, 1969), 84–87. The legislation of 1361 limited trumpets
to one pair per household providing one of the twelve "Marys," except
for two pair per household on the feasts of St. Paul (January 25)
and from the feast of the Translation of St. Mark (January 31) until
the transit of the Marys (February 2).

130
Muir, Civic Ritual, 198–209 (quotation from p. 200).
In these pages Muir cites the relevant documents and gives details
of the hierarchical ranking and position of various elements of ducal
processions.

132
Muir, Civic Ritual, 188–89. There was a Libro ordinum
Ecclesiae sancti Marci, now lost,as early as 1307. The
most important ceremoniali of St. Mark's were the Ritum
ecclesiasticorum ceremoniale compiled by Bartolomeo Bonifacio
in 1562 and the Ceremoniale magnum of Giovanni Battista Pace
of 1678. The ceremoniali and liturgical booksand manuscripts
of St. Mark's are discussed and analyzed in detail in Giulio Cattin,
Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3 vols. (Venice: Fondazione
Levi, 1990).

133
For a general account of Venetian processions and more detailed descriptions
of a number of specific annual processions, see Lina Urban, Processioni
e feste dogali: "Venetia est mundus" (Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore,
1998).

137
See note 134. For the differences in the components of a procession
in trionfo (con onori) and senza onori, see Document
7.

138
The seven feasts in which the scuole grandi participated were
the feasts of St. Isadore, the Translation of the body of St. Mark,
Corpus Christi, Finding of the body of St. Mark, St. Vido, St. Giustina,
and St. Marina. See Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino,"
73.

139
See Muir, Civic Ritual, 78, note 35, for his estimate of the
total number of regularly scheduled processions at the end of the
16th century as well as a survey
of the number of official processions listed in various medieval and
Renaissance sources. The political significance of these processions,
their increasing number in the 16th
century, their evolution into the 17th
century, and the rigid ordering of the participants is thoroughly
described by Muir on pp. 185–211.

140
Giacomo Franco, Habiti d'huomeni et donne venetiane con la processione
della Ser.ma Signoria et altri particolari, cioè trionfi feste
et ceremonie publiche della nobilissima città di Venetia.
[1610] (facs. ed., Venice: Ferdinando Ongania Editore, 1878), Plate
XXV. The Corpus Christi (Corpus Domini in Italian) procession
was the most important of the entire church year throughout Europe.
The feast had been established by Pope Urban IV in 1264 and was accompanied
from its origins by an elaborate procession. See Bowles, "Music Instruments
in Civic Processions," 159. The feast was equally prominent in the
Venetian calendar where it involved two separate processions during
the course of the day. The first, in Piazza San Marco, included the
scuole grandi, the religious orders, the nine congregations
of clerics, the regular canons, the chapters of San Pietro di Castello
and St. Mark's, pilgrims stopping enroute to the Holy Land, and at
the rear, the ducal cortege. See note 230.
Each major contingent had its own musicians and singers at its head
and the procession could last five to six hours. See Urban, Processioni
e feste dogali, 98–99. Marin Sanudo, in describing in detail
a lengthy procession in celebration of the signing of the treaty establishing
the Holy League on October 20, 1511, indicates that it lasted five
hours: "Fo comenzata la processione a hore 16 et compita a hore 21."
See Marino Sanuto, I diarii, eds. R. Tulin et al (reprint ed.
Bologna: Forni Editore, 1969), 13, col. 144.Return to note 176.

142
Muir discusses the annual ritual occasions as well as the types of
one-time observances involving processions in Civic Ritual, 212–50.
Perhaps the most elaborate and extensive of all the occasional celebrations
were the rejoicings at the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto
in 1571 (see paragraph
35.6). Eight days of celebrations, involving numerous processions,
ceremonies and other activities, are summarized in Iain Fenlon, "Lepanto:
le arti della celebrazione nella Venezia del rinascimento," Crisi
e rinnovamenti nell'autunno del rinascimento a Venezia, ed. Vittore
Branca e Carlo Ossola (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1991), 373–406.
For a shorter version, see idem, "In Destructione Turcharum:
The Victory of Lepanto in Sixteenth-Century Music and Letters," Andrea
Gabrieli e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno internazionale (Venezia
16–18 Settembre 1985), ed. Francesco Degrada (Florence:
Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1987), 293–317. Because the victory
occurred on October 7, the feast of Santa Giustina, she was considered
the heavenly architect of the victory and the celebration of her feast
became thenceforth the annual celebration of Lepanto as well.Return to note 418.

143
For an account of the legend, see Muir, Civic Ritual, 106 and
116; and Lina Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 179–81.
See also Lina Padoan Urban, "La festa della Sensa nelle arti e nell'iconografia,"
Studi veneziani 10 (1968): 291–353. Urban draws from
the Biblioteca Correr ms. Correr n. 383, Cl. I [cod. Correr n. 1497],
Storia della venuta a Venezia di papa Alessandro III. The doge's
trumpets were reputed at least once in the 16th
century to have been originally of copper. See Jonathan Emmanuel Glixon,
"Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi', 1440–1540," 2
vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1979), I: 210 and
II: 134–35 (docs. E1–3 and E8). For further reports from
the 16th and 18th
centuries on the history of these instruments, see notes
345 and 346.

144
For a reproduction, see Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana
del Seicento, 3 vols. (Milano: Electa, 1981), II: 489, plate 126.
There are numerous other representations of Pope Alexander giving
one or more of these symbols to Doge Ziani in Venetian iconography.
The Biblioteca Correr in Venice contains a 15th century manuscript
(Cod. Correr 383 cl. I, n. 1497) with a series of miniatures depicting
Alexander III giving to Doge Ziani the ceremonial sword, the white
candle, the golden ring symbolizing the marriage of Venice with the
sea, the third of the ducal umbrellas, the trombe d'argento
(four are depicted) and the eight banners of different colors. Another
miniature illustrates a Venetian ambassador presenting a document
to Federico Barbarossa that has been sealed with the special lead
seal also conceded to Doge Ziani by Alexander III. These miniatures
are reproduced in Agostino Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia: ricerche
sulle insegne del potere ducale a Venezia durante il medioevo," Studi
veneziani 8 (1965): plates 35–40. Pertusi discusses the
actual origins of each of the ducal symbols, including the trombe
d'argento. After the first surviving documentary record of these
trumpets from 1229, six silver trumpets are mentioned in a description
of an Easter procession during the reign of Doge Ranieri Zeno (1253–1268).
See Pertusi, 91. The entire set of legends is reviewed in Muir, Civic
Ritual, 103–19. The four paintings in the ducal palace are
reproduced on 110–11. The symbols of ducal authority are also
described in Staale Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall:
Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic, Vol.
5 of Acta ad Archaelogiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia of
the Institutum Romanum Norvegiae (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider,
1974),156–66. For a 17th-century
account of the legends, from Nicolò Doglioni, . . . delle
cose successe dalla prima fondation di Venetia sino all'anno di Christo
M.D.XCVII. . . In Venetia, M.D.XCVIII. Appresso Damian Zenar,
111; see Document
8. Doglioni cites on p. 112 a documentary reference signed by
the pope as the basis for his account. Doglioni, who was also known
as Leonico Goldioni, published several successive, updated editions
of his work well into the 17th century. Francesco Sansovino also gave
an account of the gifts from Alexander III in the midst of his description
of the procession of a newly elected doge displaying the symbols of
ducal authority. See Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città
nobilissima, 479–80 (Document
9). For an overview of music in Venetian ritual life in the 16th
and 17th centuries, see Ellen Rosand,
"Music in the Myth of Venice," Renaissance Quarterly 30(1977): 511–37.Return to note 161.

146
Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 181; The passage cited is
Canal Estoires de Venise, 246. Canal's description of the Easter
procession and ceremonies gives an idea of how they were structured
three centuries before the time of the woodcut of Matteo Pagan, described
in section
17. For Canal's full text, see Document
5.

147
Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città nobilissima, 479.
For the full text, see Document
9. See also Muir, Civic ritual, 264–65.

148
See Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 184, note 33. For Sanudo's
full text, see Document
10. It is possible that by the phrase "prima erano di rame" Sanudo
wasn't referring to the period prior to Doge Gritti, but rather to
some indefinite period in the past.

152
Reproduced in James W. McKinnon, "The Fifteen Temple Steps and the
Gradual Psalms," Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 30. The Breviary was
for Queen Isabella of Spain; the illuminations are by Flemish artists.

156
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Départment des manuscrits,
fr. 1586, fol. 55. This manuscript comprises a collection of the poetry
of Guillaume de Machaut. See the reproduction in Catherine Homo-Lechner,
"De l'usage de la cornemuse dans les banquets: quelques exemples du
XIVe au XVIe siècle," Imago Musicae 4 (1987): 115. The
depiction of long straight trumpets playing together with other instruments
for Tafelmusik demonstrates that these trumpets were not confined
merely to a signaling function. A mid-14th
century instructional treatise by Konrad of Megenberg, a German living
in Paris, describes tube playing together with tibie (shawms)
at feasts, inspiring young girls to "dance eagerly to the loud noise,
like hinds, shaking their buttocks womanishly and rudely." See Christopher
Page, "German musicians and their instruments, a 14th
century account by Konrad of Megenberg," Early Music 10 (1982):
194. The passage is also quoted in Welker, "'Alta capella,'" 124–25,
where Welker stresses Megenberg's assessment that a trumpet and shawm
sound well together.

157
See Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice,
trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1990), 178.

159
The commission for the cycle of paintings on the life of St. Ursula
was stimulated by parallels between her career and the life of the
Venetian Caterina Cornaro, who, like St. Ursula, was married by proxy
to a foreign prince whom she only later joined and who died soon afterward.
See note 359. On the Carpaccio
cycle, including the place of this painting in the series, see Giovanna
Nepi Scirè, Carpaccio: Storie di Sant'Orsola (Milan:
Electa, 2000); and Garry Wills, Venice: Lion City (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2001), 137–47.Return to note 359.

160
Peter Downey, "The Danish Trumpet Ensemble at the Court of King Christian
III - some Notes on its Instruments and its Music," Dansk Arbog
for Musikforskning 19 (1988–91): 8.

162
This issue is also emphasized by Muir in Civic Ritual, 260–61.
David Rosand puts the matter succinctly: "Venice represented above
all that concept, of the legitimate state, and was universally so
recognized. Dependent upon no single ruler but rather founded on immutable
law, Venice could indeed assert the independent idea of itself, a
republic of and yet existing above men." See David Rosand, "Venetia
Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth," Interpretazioni Veneziane:
Studi di Storia dell'Arte in Onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed.
David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), 180.

163
See Muir, Civic Ritual, 251–98 for a full discussion
of the restrictions placed on the doge by the civic polity.

166Fiati, 46 item 3. Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, busta 168. For
the full text, see Document
4. For another source from the same period that refers to the
doge's trombetti e pifferi (exclusive of the trombe grandi
d'argento) see Document 37.
Documents of this period at times use the term trombetti and
at times tromboni. According to Keith Polk, however, the trombone
in this period was still very probably a single-slide trumpet, since
we have no sure knowledge of U-shaped double-slide trombones until
near the end of the century. See Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents,"
25–26. See also note 67
for ambiguities in Florentine terminology for trumpets and trombones.
It must be kept in mind that the scribes who wrote these documents
were not musicians and were often not interested in or even necessarily
knowledgeable about the details of particular instruments. Their principal
concerns were the decrees themselves, the payments made, and the funds
from which those payments were drawn.

167
An oft-quoted letter of December 1494 from Giovanni Alvise di Zorzi,
trombonist in the ensemble of the Venetian doge, to Francesco Gonzaga,
Marquis of Mantua, accompanied by some arrangements of motets for
instrumental ensemble, mentions that there are six members of the
doge's ensemble. The letter was first published with the incorrect
date of 1495 in Stefano Davari, "La musica a Mantova," Rivista
Storica Mantovana 1 (1884): 53–54. More recently, the letter
has been published in Rodolfo Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori,"
348; and Kämper, "Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik,"
53. For correction of the date, see Prizer, "Bernardino Piffaro,"
161.

168
In a 15th-century ceremoniale
from the monastery of San Zaccaria, the doge's instruments are listed
as fifteen, which points to nine pifferi in addition to the
six trombe d'argento. See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole
grandi'," I: 211 and II: 130 (doc. D9). The Ritum ecclesiasticorum
cerimoniale of 1559–1564 mentions eight Sonatori del
Principe. See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 255, his
Document 61. Although the number of instruments in the pifferi
del doge varied, according to documents and iconographic evidence,
from four to as many as nine, the most frequent number encountered
is five or six. A list of six pifferi of the doge, evenly balanced
between three, named simply pifaro, and three others named
as trombone, dates from 1506–1512. See Glixon, "Music
at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 210–11 and II: 74
(doc. 195). In the depictions of processions discussed below, the
number of pifferi is either five or six.

169
For a few references to the doge's pifferi performing in St.
Mark's, see Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni,
46, item 2; 47, item 5; 48, item 7; and Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's,
I: 255, his Document 61. The doge's pifferi were separate from
the instrumental ensemble of St. Mark's, evidently until the early
17th century. See the discussion
of Giovanni Bassano's instrumental union in paragraph
12.6.

171
Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 81–82 and 255 (doc.
61). The famous cornettist Girolamo dalla Casa, from Udine, was first
hired at St. Mark's on January 29, 1568 as the leader of a salaried
three-person band that included his brothers. Girolamo remained as
leader of the instrumentalists until his death in 1601 when he was
replaced by Giovanni Bassano, who had been a member of the windband
as far back as the 1570s. Bassano served as leader until 1617. See
Reinmar Emans, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms in Venedig 1650–1708:
1. Teil," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 65 (1981), 57–58;
and Edwards, "Setting the Tone at San Marco," 395. In the sixteenth
century the cornetto gradually became preferred over the shawm throughout
Italy and Germany.

172
By the seventeenth century many windbands centered around cornettos
and trombones, though shawms were still used at times. A Florentine
document of 1386 uses the term cornecti, but Keith Polk thinks
this may apply to "a straight trumpet, perhaps with a very rudimentary
slide." See Zippel, 14; Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents,"
27; and Welker, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 254–55,
where the author interprets the instrument as a cornetto. Indeed,
the term cornette appears in another Florentine document of
1387 (see note
67). In any event, cornettos had come into common use in Italy
at least by the beginning of the 16th
century. An ensemble of cornettos and trombones is described as early
as 1505 in a letter from Giovanni Alvise di Zorzi, a trombonist in
the pifferi del doge of Venice, to Francesco II Gonzaga of
Mantua. See Prizer, "Bernardino Piffaro," 161–62; and Baroncini,
"Se canta dalli cantori," 348–59. Documents from the Scuola
San Giovanni Evangelista from 1527 name a Ser Zuan Maria as pifaro
dal corneto, illustrating not only that the cornetto was used
in windbands by this time, but also that the term pifaro could
now refer to players of the cornetto as well as shawms and trombones.
See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian Scuole Grandi," I: 78.

173
An anonymous account of the entrance into Venice of Alfonso d'Este,
Duke of Ferrara, in 1562 mentions a dozen trumpeters leading the procession:
"Andarano primieramente i Trombetti, che erano dodici . . ." The account
is found in Biblioteca Marciana Misc. 180.4, p. 6. Giovanni Stringa
and Giovanni Rota both describe twenty-four trumpeters and drummers
and another twelve playing pifferi and short silver trumpets
in their accounts of the coronation of the Dogaressa Morosina Morosini
Grimani in 1597 (see paragraph
22.3 and notes
320 and 321 as well as Document
11). Twelve trumpets and twelve drums are mentioned in Marco Ginammi's
pamphlet on the 1631 plague ceremonies in describing the procession
over a pontoon bridge to the site of Santa Maria della Salute (see
Document 1). Documents
of 10 January, 1691, and 29 November, 1694 (Procuratori di San Marco
de supra, Chiesa, Scontro, reg. 36) testify to the continuing tradition
of twelve trumpeters and twelve drummers, in these cases associated
with ceremonies in St. Mark's. Both documents are quoted in the catalogue
of the exhibition Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni,
49, items 13 and 15. See Document
12. On the other hand, a dozen trumpeters and drummers was not
a fixed rule. In 1574, Henry III, King of France and Poland was received
into the city with twenty trumpets and twenty drums: "Erant ante palatium
super fundamenta viginti tympanistae, induti sagis, & califis
sericis, coloris flavi, & caerulei, cum pileolis eiusdem cultus:
in fenestra vel pedio primae aulae viginti tubicines, eodem quo tympanistae
cultu ornate: Omnes permixto tubarum, & tymponorum millitarium
sono, regem venientem salutabant . . ." The account is found in Biblioteca
Marciana, Misc. 180.6, folio B1 recto.Return to paragraph 41.3

174
The majority of processions did not move from one part of the city
to another, but rather were concentrated in St. Mark's square. Processions
could also be partly or even entirely indoors. Some processions wound
their way through the basilica of St. Mark's and through the ducal
palace itself. See Muir, Civic Ritual, 185–211.

182
The most important general studies of music at St. Mark's in this
period are Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's; Ongaro, "The
Chapel of St. Mark's;" Edwards, "Claudio Merulo," 68–158; and
Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco. See also Giulio Ongaro,
"Sixteenth-Century Patronage at St Mark's, Venice," Early Music
History 8 (1988): 81–115.

183
On the organization of the chapel, see Ongaro, "The Chapel of St.
Mark's," 19–21.

184
For general overviews of the role of trumpets and wind instruments
in churches in Italy, see especially Glixon, "Music at the Venetian
'Scuole grandi';" Stefani, Musica e religione nell'Italia
barocca; Jerome Roche, North Italian Church Music in the Age
of Monteverdi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Stephen Bonta,
"The Use of Instruments in Sacred Music in Italy, 1560–1700,"
Early Music 18 (1990): 519–35; andMarco Di Pasquale,
"Aspetti della pratica strumentale nelle chiese italiane fra tardo
medioevo e prima età moderna," Rivista internazionale di
musica sacra 16 (1995): 239–68.

185
Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, busta 168, 1460 maggio 16: "El fo' deliberando
che i trombetti ed i piffari, i qual servissero nelle solennità
et altre cose nostre che per honor della città continuamente
i stessero in la città, i fosse dado fra tutti lor ducati 20
al mese . . ." Cited in Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti
moderni, 46, item 2. The term solennità is often
used for liturgical services, though it could mean solemnities in
a more general sense, such as processions. Processions, of course,
also took place in St. Mark's itself, with the ducal corteo,
including its musicians, both entering and exiting the basilica.

195
Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 212–13
and II: 134 (docs. E6 [Document
15]and E10 [Document
18]). The eight trombe di bataglia mentioned in document
E10 were a group of trumpets separate from the trombe et pifari
del Serenissimo. See also Merkley & Merkley, Music and
Patronage, 416, for a description of the trumpets of the visiting
Beatrice d'Este playing from the loggia of St. Mark's over the front
door before mass in 1493: "sonando li trumbeti nostri sopra al chiesa
ad una logia." For a modern edition of this collection, see Giovanni
Rovetta, Messa e salmi concertati, op. 4 (1639), ed. Linda
Maria Koldau, "Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era,"
109 (Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc., 2001).

196
The mass was published, together with a sizable collection of Vesper
psalms, in Giovanni Rovetta, Messa, e Salmi Concertati A Cinque,
Sei, Sette, Otto Voci, E Due Violini. . . . Opera Quarta. Dedicata
alla Maesta Christianissima del Gloriosissimo Re di Francia, et di
Navarra Luigi XIII. Il Giusto. . . In Venetia, Appresso Alessandro
Vincenti. M.DC.XXXIX. It is not clear from the dedication of the
print whether the festivities included a Vespers as well as the Mass.
See Document 21.

205
"Nihil tamen disponentes quoad ecclesiam Sancti Marci, à nostra
iurisdictione exempta." Quoted from Quaranta, Oltre San Marco,
169. As David Bryant has suggested in personal conversation, such
a prohibition may have simply meant that one had to apply to the Patriarch
for exceptions.Return to note 238

210
Ongaro, "Gli inizi della musica," 220–26. The maestro di
cappella from 1565 to 1590, Gioseffo Zarlino, actively promoted
the expansion of instrumental activity at St. Mark's, setting the
pattern for the 17th century. See
Edwards, "Setting the Tone at San Marco," 395.

213
See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 12 regarding the number
of instrumentalists at St. Mark's in 1614 and the search for a successor
to Bassano as capo. The formation of the union is described
on p. 82. The relevant documents, comprising the petition to the doge
for formation of the union, as well as the union's by-laws, are transcribed
on pp. 255–60 (docs. 62–63). See also Luisi, Laudario
Giustinianeo, I: 419–20, 516–19 (docs. A.2, A.3, A.4).
Bassano's union of instrumentalists was modeled on an earlier effort
to form a union of singers at St. Mark's in 1553, organized for a
similar purpose (see paragraph
13.4). Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, companies
of singers and instrumentalists were formed to compete for and distribute
such outside work. See Jonathan Glixon, "A Musicians' Union in Sixteenth-Century
Venice," Journal of the American Musicological Society 36 (1983),
392–421; and Giulio M. Ongaro, "La musica come professione nelle
attività dei musicisti marciani tra la fine del cinquecento
e il primo seicento," La cappella musicale di San Marco nell'età
moderna: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia-Palazzo
Giustinian Lolin, 5–7 settembre 1994, ed. Francesco Passadore
and Franco Rossi (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1998), 215–24.

219
See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 84, 260–61. In the
by-laws, the instrumentalists are the same as those named in the original
petition of two years earlier, with the exception of Battista Fabri,
who replaced Lorenzo Cittera. The union member not included in the
list of St. Mark's instrumentalists is Nicolò da Udine. There
is a Zuane da Udene on the St. Mark's list, who could conceivably
have been Nicolò's father, analogous to the presence of Giacomo
Rovetta, and subsequently his son Giovanni, on the instrumental lists
of 1614 and 1616.

222
The church and oratorio of the Steccata at Parma offers a parallel
example. The wind players employed at the Steccata in the 17th
century included only cornettists and trombonists. See Pelicelli,
"Musicisti in Parma," 224–46.

223
See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 87–88, 264–65
(docs. 74–78, covering the period 1640–1646).

226
A list of increases in salary for instrumentalists in St. Mark's in
the period 1660–1708 documents a trumpeter by the name of Alessandro
Fedeli on the payroll in 1664 and another by the name of Lunardo Laurenti
in 1689. Procuratori di San Marco de supra, Chiesa, busta 91. Proc.
208. The documents are quoted in Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri
e strumenti moderni, 53, item 29. Eleanor Selfridge-Field lists
Fedeli as a trombonist, hired on October 5, 1664 (the same date as
his listing as a trumpeter in the document cited above), but the document
clearly states tromba in a period when tromba and trombone
were usually more clearly distinguished than in earlier times.
Fedeli also played string instruments. Francesco Bernardini and Leonardo
Laurenti are listed by Selfridge-Field as trumpeters, both hired on
September 11, 1685. Two trumpeters were still on the payroll in 1708.
See Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, Third
Revised Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994), 340–41;
Emans, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms," 58–59; and idem, "Die Musiker
des Markusdoms in Venedig 1650–1708: 2. Teil," Kirchenmusikalisches
Jahrbuch 66 (1982): 65–67. In the latter article Emans lists
payments to Fedeli for playing the trombone on October 5, 1664 and
for playing the trumpet on January 20, 1686. Bernardini and Laurenti
are both listed as musico straordinario paid for playing the
trumpet in a Te Deum on September 9, 1685 as well as for other,
later performances. It is possible that these performances for which
individual payments are noted in the accounts were in addition to
the trumpeters' regular responsibilities for which they were salaried.
The uncertainty over what and when these instrumentalists played reflects
both the ambiguity and incompleteness of the documentary record.Return to note 266.

228
Jonathan Glixon's description of the scuole grandi is succinct:
"These six institutions, the first of which was founded in the mid-thirteenth
century and which survived until the fall of the Republic at the time
of Napoleon, were among the principal charitable organizations of
Venice, long famous for their patronage of art and architecture, and
carried on active ceremonial and musical roles for over five centuries."
In addition to processions on the first Sunday of each month and on
the feast of each scuola's patron saint, the scuole processed
to the Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello on the Sundays of Lent,
to specified churches in the vicinity of the scuola, to specified
churches distant from the scuola, to San Marco, and for the
funerals of members. See Jonathan Glixon, "Music and Ceremony at the
Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista: A New Document from the
Venetian State Archives," Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety
and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraternities,
ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications,
1991), 56, 58. In addition to the other cited writings of Glixon,
the musical functions of the scuole are surveyed and numerous
documents are transcribed in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo,
I: 413–524; and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino."

229
A Libro di ordini was compiled at the Scuola San Rocco in 1521
prescribing feast by feast what was to be carried in the procession
and the order of its elements. The document is transcribed almost
complete in Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 147–51.

230
The only known document detailing the annual processions of a scuola
is the 1570 Libro Vardian da Matin of the Scuola di San
Giovanni Evangelista cited in note 228. Although most processions
had only a single destination, processions to the Cathedral of San
Pietro in Lent made anywhere from nine to fifteen stops en route.
Funeral processions traveled to the home of the deceased, then carried
the body to one of the tombs used by the scuola, scattered
throughout the city, or to the church specified by the deceased. Some
of the processions took place at night, since the scuole were
not allowed to process in the Piazza San Marco during the daytime.
This rule obviously applied only to processions of individual scuole,
not to large civic processions in which all of the scuole took
part. On the feast of Corpus Christi there were two processions separated
by dinner: one to the Piazza San Marco and the second to the Church
of Corpus Christi. See Glixon, "Music and Ceremony at the Scuola Grande
di San Giovanni Evangelista," 60–78, which includes maps of
processional destinations, stopping places and conjectural routes.
For Giacomo Franco's engraving of the Corpus Christi procession in
the Piazza San Marco, see Figure 4 .Return to note 140.

231
See the table illustrating processions of the scuole grandi
followed by liturgical services employing the same musicians in Glixon,
"Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 185–87. See
also the many documents transcribed in the other cited writings of
Glixon and in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 468–512;
and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 136–85.

232
See the documentation below for the scuole piccole dating from
the late 14th century.

233
See Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents" and the discussions
in paragraphs 3.3, 3.4,
5.8 and 26.1.
See also notes 67 and 80.

238
See Document 24.
We are grateful to Jonathan Glixon for bringing this document to our
attention. See Jonathan Glixon, "Music at the Venetian Scuole Grandi,"
Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Iain Fenlon
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 205, 208: "a di xiii
ditto [Dezember 1530]. Dovendose in questo zorno far la dispensa dele
novize fiole de fradeli morti dela Schuola . . . Da poi fu cantata
una solene mesa in canto con diachono et subdiachono, sonadori de
tronbe e pifari et corneti et eziam organo et cantadori, con universal
satisfazion de tutti . . . " The document is also included in abbreviated
form in Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole Grandi," II: 87 (doc.
228), and in a more extended version in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo,
I: 500 (doc. 32). As in the documents cited in notes
69 and 187, trombe, pifari, and
corneti are all distinguished from one another as separate
types of instruments. While this use of instruments seemingly violated
the prohibition of the Patriarch cited in note
205, it is also possible that dispensation was sought and obtained
from the Patriarch for this particular event.

239
Further studies by Jonathan Glixon regarding the scuole grandi
are "Music at the Scuole in the Age of Andrea Gabrieli," Andrea
Gabrieli e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno internazionale (Venezia
16–18 settembre 1985), ed. Francesco Degrada (Florence:
Leo S. Olschki, 1987), 59–74; "Far una bella procession:
Music and Public Ceremony at the Venetian scuole grandi,"Altro Polo: Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed.
Richard Charteris(Sydney: University of Sydney, 1990), 190–220;
and "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuole: Collaboration
or Competition?" La cappella musicale di San Marco nell'età
moderna, 301–12. Glixon is currently preparing a book on
music in the scuole grandi and scuole piccole. See
also Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 413–512; and Baroncini,
"Contributo alla storia del violino."

240
Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 105–11. For
documents concerning the employment of wind players by the scuole
grandi, see Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 475 (his document
53), 478–9 (document 72), 495 (document 4), 500 (document 32),
506 (document 1) and 521–2 (document C.1). Pay records show
that pifferi ensembles were hired for the feast of San Teodoro
by the Scuola di San Teodoro in the 1580s and pifferi continued
to take part in the music for the feast of San Rocco at the Scuola
di San Rocco all the way through the beginning of the plague of 1630.
See Glixon, "The Musicians of the Capella and the Scuole,"
306–7.

242
The entire affair, together with many original documents and their
English translations, is recounted in Glixon, "A Musicians' Union."
A discussion of this matter, including several documents not published
by Glixon, is found in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 416–18
and 509–12. See also Ongaro, "La musica come professione."

243
Glixon, "A Musicians' Union," 410–12; and idem "The Musicians
of the Cappella and the Scuola," 306.

245
Jonathan Glixon, "Far il buon concerto: Music at the Venetian
Scuole Piccole in the Seventeenth Century," Journal of Seventeenth-Century
Music I/1 (1995) <http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v1/no1/glixon.html>,
paragraph 2.1; and idem, "Con canti et organo: 'Music at the Venetian
scuole piccole during the Renaissance'," Music in Renaissance
Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie
Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings (Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park
Press, 1997), 123–40. According to Glixon, "the term scuole
piccole was used . . . to designate any confraternity (either
lay or religious) other than the six flagellant scuole grandi."
Glixon describes several types of scuole piccole according
to their various functions. See "Con canti et organo," 124–26.

249
Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 129. Glixon quotes a 1514 mariegola
from the Scuola della Beata Vergine in San Basilio which limited
the amount of money it could spend from its own funds for cantori,
sonadori, concieri (decorations) and other expenses. Glixon has
found over twenty similar directives limiting expenditures for music
and other decorations. Often costs above the fixed amounts were paid
by individual officers of a scuola. See ibid., 132.

250
Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 147. For the full text see Document
26. A much earlier reference to the use of trumpets in a procession
comes from Padua in the 1324 rule of the Scuola di Santa Lucia, which
prescribed the ceremonies of the patronal feast with the brothers
processing in order to the church of Santa Lucia with trumpets. For
the text see Document
27.

254
Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 130. The players undoubtedly participated
in the elaborate Corpus Christi processions, which involved all of
the scuole, grandi and piccole.

255
Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 130. Glixon uses the phrase "trombe
e piffari," but the document in question merely lists musicians and
their instruments, indicating those who belonged to the doge's ensemble
by the phrases del Principo or del Serenissimo Principo,
without giving any title to the doge's ensemble itself. See
note 288.

258
See Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 143–44; and Glixon, "Con
canti et organo," 128. On the vigil of the feast a platform (soler)
was mounted on a boat with two children representing St. Ursula and
an angel. The boat and its occupants were carried by fifteen men and
accompanied by musicians to St. Mark's and the Rialto to announce
the feast (per denonziar la festa). This type of celebration
seems to have been a regular, annual affair rather than limited to
the years for which there is documentation.

260
Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 132–33. Glixon gives a table
of the specific individuals, including singers, wind players, string
players, and organists, hired for each of the eight years between
1577 and 1597 for which detailed documentation survives. See also
Glixon, "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuola,"
309.

266
See Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraphs 3.4–3.6
and Table 1; and idem, "The Musicians of the Cappella and the
Scuole," 309–11. For the text of the contract and Glixon's
translation, see Document
31. The naming of instruments in this contract is especially precise
and detailed, distinguishing, for example, among several types of
string instruments. The brass instrument is designated by the word
tromba and is mentioned not in conjunction with the cornetti,
but after the tiorba. Although this word could be interpreted
to mean trombone (see the discussion in paragraph
37.1), thereby constituting with the two cornettos a typical ensemble
of pifferi, the cornettos (obsolescent instruments by this
time) were dropped in 1695, while the tromba was retained.
Thus it seems obvious that by tromba is indeed meant a trumpet,
especially since there were trumpeters among the salaried instrumentalists
at St. Mark's. See note
226.

268
Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraph 2.6; Glixon, "Con
canti et organo," 135. For the text of this admonition, copies of
which were sent to all the scuole, and Glixon's English translation,
see Document 32.
The document had been previously quoted in Moore, Vespers at St.
Mark's, I: 278–79 from the version adopted by the Provveditori
di Comun and preserved in Busta 47 of the Provveditori di Comun in
the Archivio di Stato.

269
Monferrato had also provided elaborate music for the same scuola
earlier in 1642. See Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 136.

270
Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 147. For the text of this protocol,
see Document 33.

271
See the extensive list in Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 107–10.
The annual procession of the Scuola di Sant'Antonio Confessore in
Padua placed the pifferi at the head of the procession and
the trombetti ahead of the reliquary (p. 155). In addition
to payment lists that mention trumpets and other instruments, inventories
of furnishings of the scuole also list banners that were appended
to trumpets and pifferi during processions (pp. 147–48).

273
See Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, 14. See also
Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori," 341, where the author cites a
document from the Scuola Grande di San Marco of 1515 that,
in outlining the procedure for processions and liturgical rites on
the first Sunday of each month, indicates the addition of recorders
and cornettos to the pifferi: ". . .ac etiam a tutta la messa
debano sonar sì de trombe et pifari, come de fiauti et corneti
. . ." Trombe in this context could refer to trombones. The
entire document is reproduced in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo,
I: 477, no. 68. In an earlier period, shawms and cornettos were kept
separate, as instruments appropriate to loud ensembles and soft ensembles
respectively. However, the mixing of shawms and cornettos became more
common in the early 16th century
(see paragraph 10.2).
See McGee, "Giovanni Cellini, Piffaro di Firenze," 214.Return to note 413.

275
Altenburg, Untersuchungen, III, plate 142. See also plate 141
for a similar funeral ensemble. These engravings are similar enough
to the one for Charles V's procession to suggest a traditional formation
for funeral musicians.

276
Robert Barclay, in personal communication, has suggested that drums
may have been carried in funeral processions, but not played.

278
The painting is in Sala 17 of the Museo Correr, at the lower left
of a group of six small illustrations by Piazza of the life of Francesco
Morosini. See Giandomenico Romanelli, Correr Museum, Engl.
trans. Jeffrey Jennings (Milan: Electa, 1995), 38.

280
The careful distinction the Venetians drew between the continuity
of civic authority and the person of the deceased doge, especially
regarding funerals and the election of a new doge, is described in
Muir, Civic Ritual, 268–80. See also Edward Muir, "The
Doge as Primus inter Pares: Interregnum Rites in Early Sixteenth-Century
Venice," in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. Sergio
Bertelli and Gloria Ramakus (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978),
105–14.

281
See the reproduction in Michela Knezevich, Il Magnifico Principe
di Venezia (Venice: Edizioni Storti, 1986), 104–5; and at
<http://www.provincia.venezia.it/querini/gallery/Pages/XVIII/bella/doge/funerali.htm>.
Muir, Civic Ritual, 273, note 69 cites the death from the plague
of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo in 1485, when the doge's body was buried
immediately. For the funeral rites the body was replaced with an effigy.
On the basis of the foregoing information about Venetian funerals,
Kurtzman has abandoned his suggestion that muted trumpets may have
accompanied funeral processions in Venice during the plague years
of 1630–31 made in Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, "Monteverdi's 'Mass
of Thanksgiving' revisited," Early Music 22 (1994), 70.

282
See Glixon, "Far una bella procession," 194–95; and idem,
"Music and Ceremony at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista,"
where there is considerable information regarding funerals of the
Scuola. Francesco Luisi, in Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 415,
claims the participation of instrumentalists in funerals of the Scuola
di Santa Maria della Carità, but the documents he cites (p.
491, documents 10, 11) don't substantiate his assumptions.

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